


As One

by JoAsakura



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2013-08-10
Packaged: 2017-12-23 00:49:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/920029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoAsakura/pseuds/JoAsakura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for the Jaegercon 2013 Gift Exchange</p>
            </blockquote>





	As One

**Author's Note:**

> for tumblrer aquabender. I hope you like it!

As she feels the click-thunk of the control arm attaching to her suit, Mako feels a calm she didn’t expect wash over her.

Every moment has led to this. She knows every inch of wire, every bolt, every circuit humming with energy in the blue giant around her. This is what she was made for, she thinks.

She doesn’t know Raleigh, though. Not like she thought she would from studying the Becket brothers, at any rate. But as she glances at him, settling into his own arm, she thinks she might, just a little. The look on his face, through the glow of his helmet, is one of a man who thought he might never come home again.

But as Tendo initiates the bridge, Mako discovers something she hadn’t expected. Not from 51 drops, 51 kills in the simulator. Not from any bit of study she’d greedily devoured.

She expected to feel the jaeger as the bridge connected them, to gain the sensory feedback of a thirty-story second skin.

But what she feels is something else. A glimpse and then it’s gone in the dancing play of memories shuffling across her consciousness. Cautious but welcoming. An irrational certainty of existence that only occurs in a dream.

Gipsy Danger.

Suddenly, Mako understands. She’s (He’s) come home again (for the first time) (in so very long). She (he) is waking up after a long and fitful sleep.

The pulse of of the jaeger’s nuclear heart in time with his (hers), as she (he) _(they)_ shift their metal bones and find their stance.

The sudden stab of memory, the painful bite of the RABIT, shocks her (him) (them) from the comfortable embrace of the drift like a knife in the heart. In the drift, moments are forever, and the flash is a slow motion nightmare show.

[(Yancy) (Raleigh) (Mako) torn like doll from (our) shared skin. Helpless. Too quick for terror until the blue-lit darkness closes in and pain. Regret. One last desperate claw at survival then gone. Gone but for the echo screaming as]

[(Raleigh)(Yancy)(Mako) watches as they’re torn from (our) shared skin. Helpless. Screaming until (our) throat bleeds. Shame. Desperately reaching out with broken arms as the storm rages outside and]

[Red flaring warning lights broken bridges a howl of shattered steel as three become two and Gipsy Danger is screaming and the air sirens are screaming and somewhere in the ash and the cold a little girl with a red shoe clutched in her dirty hands is screaming…]

~~

The next time they drift, the clock ticking down precious seconds as Striker Eureka stands silent and helpless in the dark, there is no regret or shame. There is no fear.

Because for the first time (again) they are not alone.

She is not crying alone in a filthy alley as a monster thunders overhead.

He is not screaming alone in a storm-tossed shell as a monster roars in his face.

They are Mako Mori and they take one step, brushing away the ash.

They are Raleigh Becket, and they take another, wiping the rain from their eyes.

They are a titan - a living machine of steel and flesh - and they shake the earth and stir the ocean as the choppers drop them in the churning waters, the kaiju roaring in the dark.

Two lips pull back in the same smile. This is what they were made for.


End file.
